Becoming
by random-laughter
Summary: They didn't think they'd ever break up, but only afterwards were they able to actually learn to grow into who they needed to be. DMHP, DMOC, HPOC


A/N: Hey everyone. I am working on "**Till the Sky Turns Red**", but this one-shot has been sitting in my computer for over a year now. It isn't the greatest thing in the world, but I took it out, polished it up a little bit and finished it, and am posting it. I am aware that it is a little repetitive, but I don't really care. Hope you like it!

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter….however Harry Potter has put in a decent claim on my soul….

We started out perfectly. The romance between us was never fabricated, and I will never, until the day I die try to say that we did not love each other in those years we were together. Everything was amazing. We went everywhere together. He took me to a fancy restaurant every year on my birthday, and I took him to different parts of the country every few months so that the pain in his eyes would go away slightly. It always did when we escaped from London, even if only for the day. His smile made my heart speed up every time I saw him, and he always went weak at the knees when he saw me come into a room. We were madly in love with each other for the first three years of our relationship…but then, things began to turn sour.

We could not have stopped all of the fights we got into, if we had wanted to. After all, they were always over the silliest things. One time we fought about which was the taller of us two. Another time, we fought about whose turn it was to order the take-out. Our fights escalated to the point where at least one of us was at a friend's house, and the other would sleep on the couch, absolutely refusing to sleep in a bed that was shared with the other.

The fights kept coming and coming. We tried so hard to keep it together; we were so desperate not to lose each other. We had fought for a year, just for our relationship to be accepted by everyone, and now… now we were falling apart at the seams. It was not that we were just "in lust" as some people had tried (and still try) to say. We were deeply in love with each other. However, that love had not been as strong of glue as the two of us always believed it was. We were losing each other, and that just made us want to hold on harder than we ever had before. The tight, desperate grasping was really the last straw. We were too smothered by the other. Desperate pleading to not go to bed angry always followed our fights, and kissing until we both believed our faux pas was forgotten. The only problem was that we both knew that neither of us ever forgot. Everything just bottled up until our next fight, when we would bring up all of our grievances, and throw them in the others face.

I will never forget the day he left. It was a Tuesday, and it was just before time for supper. We had miraculously not fought that day, but things had been strained, and I am sure I knew what was coming. He left the room about an hour before he walked out, carrying two suitcases, and telling me that he was going to go stay with his friends for a while. He looked at me and simply said

"We're both dying because of each other now. I am going to leave. Please don't follow me."

I nodded my head, resigned to the fact that I knew he was right. Tears streamed down my face, and I told him that even though I knew he was right, I still loved him, and I always would. He turned away then, and refused to meet my gaze. I rushed to him, kissing his cheek, and when I thought he was about to change his mind, I pushed him towards the door. We needed this. He was right. We were killing each other, and neither of us would ever be happy if we stayed together when we fought every day. It broke my heart to push him out that door, and see that he never once looked back to even wave good bye. Years later, I would find out that the reason he did not look back was so that I would not see the tears streaming down his face. He apparated away, leaving me in the house we had bought together. We had decorated it, and nurtured it into something wonderful, just like our romance had been. Now it was empty, and lost, with his departure. I did not speak to him again for two years.

HPDM

It was those two years that helped me recover. That is not to say that I woke up one morning and realized I no longer loved him. I simply woke up to realize that the deep, unending pain in my chest had lessened. Instead of feeling hollow and broken, I just felt a little empty, as if I was missing something. Not like I was missing a lover, but like I was missing my best friend. For this reason, and this reason only, I wrote him a letter.

The letter was nothing special. There were no claims of undying love or a desperate need to see him again. That was never my style. I wrote him a letter, telling him that I missed talking to him, and that I would love to continue writing letters with him, so that we could be part of each other's lives again. I did tell him I missed his company, but that I still stood by what I had said that Tuesday, two years ago. We were not what the other needed, even if we did love each other. I did not know if the letter would ever find him. I had grown over the years to tolerate his friends, and they had told me that shortly after we'd broken up, he'd left the country, claiming he needed to "see new scenery", and they hadn't known where he was going. I had to trust that my owl was reliable enough to find him, and pray that not all of my efforts would be for nothing.

Three weeks after I had sent my owl away, and a week after I'd given up hope of it ever being responded to, my owl returned one evening, with a five page letter for me to read. In it, he talked about how he missed me so much, and that he had not had anyone he could talk to as we had talked to each other. He'd even said that after the break up, he'd wanted to talk to me, simply because over the years I became his closest confidant, but he couldn't for…well, obvious reasons. He told me that he was currently in Austria, but that he would be home soon. He wanted us to keep writing, and he did not want to lose my friendship. He said that was the one regret he had was that day when he left he believed that he had lost his closest friend…for good.

He then went on to tell me all of the things he had seen while on his travels. He also wrote of all the place that he had gone. He also asked if I had sold the house. When we had split, we agreed that I could have the house, for he did not know when he would ever use it again. In fact, up until six months before I sent my letter, I had still lived in that house. Then, it became something I simply could not stand anymore. The house reminded me too much of our many fights, and our desperate battle we had waged against ourselves to try to stay together. I had sold it, deciding that the bad memories out weighed the good memories by too much for me to stay there anymore.

So I wrote back, telling him that I had in fact sold the house, and telling him about what I had been doing for myself since he had left. Looking back on that now, I think the best choice I ever made in my life was recreating my friendship with him. He helped me gain the confidence back that we had both lost from our year of pain and self-destruction together.

HPDM

It was another year after that, when his letters started to fill with a single person instead of places and things. The more that I read about this man he had met when he returned to his old job, the more I saw him falling in love with him. I could imagine the slight blush that tinted his cheeks when he told me about the man coming to visit him in his office at lunch every day, and when he wrote me a hasty letter one night to tell me that the man had finally asked him to dinner, I couldn't help but share in his joy.

At the same time that this was happening to him, I was beginning to go out at night with my friends again. I had studiously avoided them after our break-up, for they thought the easiest way for me to get over it would be to set me up with as many men as possible. This was something I did not want. The ironic thing is that even though they were not setting me up, they introduced to…_him._

It turned out that he was a friend of Pansy's who had been living on the continent since he graduated from school, two years before we had, and had come back for a visit. Pansy had felt guilty at the idea of leaving him at home to go out to lunch with me, so I had told her to bring him along with her.

When they walked in the room, I felt my breath catch. Not one time, since my three "bliss years" (as I liked to call them), had another person evoked this same breathless feeling in me, this feeling of utter dizziness, as he did. He smiled at me, and we shook hands, and within the hour had become companions. He came to visit me whenever Pansy was busy, and found excuses to come with Pansy whenever she would come to my flat.

It was almost a month though, before I found out what his true motives were. It was the day before he was to return home, and we were throwing a small goodbye party for him, with only his friends he'd visited while here, and me. After putting on a false smile all night so that no one would know I was hurting inside, he pulled me aside. Within fifteen minutes, I had learned that he had been attracted to me immediately, and after spending so much time with me, and realized he wanted to spend time with me…_exclusively_. I smiled brightly at him, and by the end of the night, we arranged for me to come visit him within a month.

When I received a letter that night, telling me how Harry's most recent date had gone, I could not help but tell him about my own happiness.

DMHP

Another year passed. In that year, I had fallen in love again, and he had been blissfully happy with his new boyfriend as well. Some of our friends liked to joke that we were the worst example of a couple that broke up because of fighting that they had ever seen. We would laugh it off, and then write to each other about it the next night. We personally thought we were the perfect example of staying friends with your "ex." We had only actually seen each other a few times in the passing year, but we had never stopped writing letters. So one day, when I received a letter that only read

"HE PROPOSED!!!"

The first thing I did was fire-call him, to share in his happiness. We talked for almost two hours, and by the time we both realized the time, my legs were numb, and I had to lie on my floor for at least another twenty minutes, before the feeling returned. Still, I had felt nothing but gladness that he was engaged. It was only then that I took the time to realize that that hollow feeling had finally disappeared, and I had never even noticed it leaving. I smiled at the thought.

HPDM

I do not know if we ever would have worked out in the end. I do not think we would have though. As the years passed, we shared many things. I was there for his wedding, and he was there for my own a year and a half later. We both privately told each other that we could not have picked a better man for the other to be with, always sharing that secret smile of ours when we would say this. Our husbands actually became relatively close as well, though they would always simply be acquaintances, and never real friends. I was there when he and his husband adopted a little girl that they named Helena, and he let me stay with his family when my own husband had to leave for six months for business.

I do not regret our break-up. It is repetitive to say so, but I will always believe this. There is still a part of me that will always yearn for just one more kiss from him. However, that part is always quickly hushed when we will hug or when my husband will enter the room, and the breathless feeling returns. After all, your first love is always the one….that you never forget.

END

Like I said, a little repetitive, and maybe a little cheesy, but I liked it. This idea floated in my head for so long that it is nice to finally get it out.

Review please!


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